French MPs have passed a law banning Islamic face veils from public areas amid
warnings it poses constitutional problems and risks being overturned in the
courts.

On the eve of Bastille Day, marking the birth of France's staunchly secular republic, the vast majority of MPs in the country's National Assembly voted in favour of outlawing the burka and the niqab from French streets, making it the second European country after Belgium to clamp down.

The new law, passed by 335 votes to one, is expected to sail through the Senate in September and be in force by early next year after a six-month explanatory period.

However, it could yet be deemed unconstitutional by France's highest legal body, the Constitutional Council, which President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party has asked to rule on the matter, while it could also fall foul of European human rights legislation.

Under the new law, women who wear face-covering veils in all public places in France, including the street, face being fined 150-euro (£125) or ordered to follow citizenship classes, or both.

Husbands and fathers who force such veils on women and girls risk a year of prison and a 30,000-euro (£25,000) fine, with both penalties doubled if the victim is a minor.

Belgium's lower house of parliament voted in April to ban all clothing that covers or partially covers the face, and similar laws are pending in Spain and some Italian municipalities. But the ban is a hot topic in France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority of around five million, many of whom live in run-down suburbs which exploded into riots in 2005.

Last week, Michèle Alliot-Marie, the justice minister, said that the new law would assert French values and help to better integrate Muslim communities into the French way of life.

An international poll published last week suggested that almost nine out of 10 French people back the burka ban – compared to six in 10 in Britain.

It has the support of women's rights groups like 'Ni Putes Ni Soumises', who wrote in France's Libération newspaper that the full veil "is the banner of a sectarian ideology" and threatens "human dignity".

Its detractors argue that the law is pointless given that less than 2,000 women are estimated to wear the full veil, and say President Sarkozy has cynically exploited the issue to woo the anti-immigration far-Right. Muslim groups, such as the government advisory body, the French Council of the Muslim Faith, have warned it risks stigmatising an already vulnerable group.

The new law's title makes no reference to Islam, burkas or niqabs, and is called "the bill to forbid concealing one's face in public".

The opposition Socialists, Greens and Communists boycotted the vote, as they wanted the ban to apply only to public services and shops, not to the street.